Friday, March 31, 2006

Tiger Team for Voting Machines


Tiger team....
Dave E, a professor at CMU, and a fellow board member for the Allegheny County Libertarian Party presented a concpet to Allegheny County Council months ago as they were pondering the new, electronic voting machines. Dave asked for a 'tiger team' to handle and hit upon the new voting machines to make sure that they were capable of counting the votes -- without messing up!

The new machines slated for arrival in Allegheny County don't work! This is bad news. And, the asked for 'tiger team' never got put in place.

County Executive Dan Onorato said on the radio that this is "confusing."

There is NO CONFUSION, Mr. Onorato. This is a binary decision -- OFF or ON. Work or broken. Tested or Free pass. Count or GUESS. Democracy or Kingdom.

The machines don't work. They failed in Illinois on multiple instances in multiple ways.

In Pennsylvania the other CMU prof who did some testing figured out how to screw up the results -- big time.

The new machines should NOT be deployed. Return them to the sender.

We'll use the older machines in our election in May 2006. We'd expect to need to use the OLD, existing, working, trusted, available, owned, machines in our November 2006 election, in Allegheny County's elections until we get a tiger team of testers to give a full workout to the new systems, in Allegheny County.

You never should take GOOD machines that are on hand and trusted and replace them with expensive, new machines that don't work.


So, the next step -- LET's FORM a TIGER TEAM -- and let's give that squad of testers the authority to certify our machines for our use for our elections. Otherwise, no deal.

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